


Been Saving for Someone Special

by sparksfly7



Category: Football RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, Fake Marriage, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-28
Updated: 2013-08-28
Packaged: 2017-12-24 22:03:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,982
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/945162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sparksfly7/pseuds/sparksfly7
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“So, let me get this straight,” David says slowly. “If you don’t get married to a Spanish citizen, you can’t stay in the country anymore and you have to go back to Argentina?”</p><p>Leo wets his lips, tugs on the fraying end of his too-long sleeve. “That sounds about right, yes.”</p><p>“And...you’re asking me? You’re proposing to me?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Been Saving for Someone Special

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文 available: [为了特别的你 Been Saving for Someone Special](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12861747) by [hastamifinal](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hastamifinal/pseuds/hastamifinal)



“So, let me get this straight,” David says slowly. “If you don’t get married to a Spanish citizen, you can’t stay in the country anymore and you have to go back to Argentina?”

Leo wets his lips, tugs on the fraying end of his too-long sleeve. “That sounds about right, yes.”

“And...you’re asking me? You’re proposing to me?”

“I—sorry I didn’t get you a ring.”

David’s look of incredulity softens into something more like amazement, like he’s standing in a dream, unable to believe what’s happening. “Leo, you know I. We’re friends, I want to help you, but this just a little...”

Leo’s heart sinks, and his mouth goes dry. He doesn’t blame David – how could he when his request is so ridiculous, so enormous? – but David is the first person he went to for a reason, and the rejection hits him like a sharp sting.

“It’s okay,” Leo mumbles. “I get it. I know it’s way too much to ask for, I just. I don’t know what else to do. Sorry.” He walks to the door, has a hand around the knob already when David’s voice stops him in his tracks.

“I’ll do it.”

Leo’s breath catches in his throat. “What?”

“I’ll do it,” David repeats. “If-if this is the only way you get to stay.”

“It’s the only way.”

“Then...” A faint smile curls at the corner of David’s lips. “I guess we have a wedding to plan.”

 

Whenever Leo had imagined getting married, he had visions of matching rings, long aisles, and lifting a veil to kiss his beautiful bride’s glowing face.

Well, the matching rings part is true, at least. David knows someone who knows someone who has a license to perform a marriage (sometimes Leo feels like David’s network of people is so vast that he can find anyone to do anything, and it makes him a little dizzy just to think about it), and here they are, standing in an old, mildew-ridden office with their plain, bought-last-minute rings.

It’s far from romantic, which is okay by Leo’s books because he’s never really been one for romance.

“Sorry I didn’t write you a vow,” David whispers.

“It’s okay,” Leo replies. His mind is blank, and he doesn’t know what else to say. He knows that David doesn’t owe him any apologies, joking or otherwise, and it’s him who owes David a thousand apologies for dragging him into this mess. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?” David looks like he genuinely doesn’t understand. Really, he’s too kind for his own good. Cesc and Gerard like to complain about how he’s “grumpy and mean, and so boring sometimes—I mean, the only people who take their coffee black are those who have a soul to match”, but Leo knows that David has a heart that’s hard to find.

“For...this. For having to marry me.”

“I can think of worse things,” David says lightly. “It’s hard, but—”

Leo shoves his shoulder, but he’s smiling. “Thank you,” he says quietly.

“Thank me later. I like coffee beans imported from Colombia.”

“And your coffee black, right?”

David gives him a look. “Like my soul, apparently.”

Leo’s tongue twists itself into a knot, but then David laughs, lines fanning around the corners of his eyes, and relief floods Leo’s chest. He’s not mad.

“I think you have a good soul,” Leo says, because he’s just that good with words.

“Well, you’d better hope so, since you’re marrying me and all.”

“I know so,” Leo says firmly, and David smiles.

 

So, they get married, and it’s strange but strangely not at the same time.

David suggests to Leo that he should move into David’s apartment, which is more than big enough for two anyway, and Leo agrees because he knows that sometimes marriages like theirs are looked into; he knows that he has to maintain the pretense.

Leo hasn’t lived with someone since his university days, crammed into a small room and a bunk bed that still hurts his back just to think about it. David is a neat roommate though (that’s all Leo can think of him as right now – a roommate, not a spouse, not a husband, those words are terrifyingly foreign and terrifying in general). He vacuums weekly, and he always keeps the bathroom clean, and he’s pretty great in the kitchen, which Leo can’t say about himself.

“I feel bad,” Leo says one day, digging into his mushroom omelette. David makes fantastic omelettes, and Leo feels like he could happily eat them for the rest of his life.

“Why?” David asks absentmindedly, not looking up from his newspaper. Being some financial expert/office higher up that he is (Leo’s still not sure what his job is, exactly, which is pretty sad considering they’ve known each other for almost seven years now), he keeps a keen eye on things like stocks.

“Well, I live in your apartment, without rent, and you cook for me all the time, and you even do my laundry sometimes.”

David snorts. “Leo, if I didn’t do your laundry, your socks would probably come alive and eat you.”

“I’m not that messy!” Leo protests.

“Sorry to break your little bubble of delusion, you are,” David says, looking away from the financial section, his eyes twinkling. “Messi.”

“My point is…” Leo clears his throat. “I-I’m really grateful. For everything. Thank you.”

“Well, we _are_ married, right?” David says. “I have to take care of my husband.”

He says that word so casually. Leo has no idea how he does it, no idea how he’s taking everything so well. But he admires David for that; he admires David, period.

“I should take care of my husband too, but I haven’t been doing much.”

“I’d tell you to cook, but...” David’s mouth crooks into a half-smirk of a smile, “...you’d probably burn down the kitchen.”

“Probably,” Leo admits.

“It’s okay. You’re like the cream and sugar to my black soul. That’s a hard enough job already.”

“Even Cesc and Geri have given up with that black soul thing,” Leo groans. “Why aren’t you letting it go?”

“Because.” David’s expression is purely a smirk this time, with only the shadow of a smile underneath. “We’re married, but we’re still friends. This is what friends do.”

“Make each other miserable?”

David cocks his head to the side. “Is that what you are – miserable?”

“Well...no.” Leo takes a gulp of water. “I’m not miserable at all. This is—not so bad.”

“Good,” David says simply, and returns to his newspaper. It doesn’t feel like a dismissal though; he’s just returning to his morning routine, and with a start, Leo realizes that he’s become a part of it. He’s really become a part of David’s life, and David a part of his.

And...it really isn’t so bad. Not at all.

 

“Pass me the wrench, would you?” David asks, reaching an arm out.

Leo hands him the tool, which is pretty much the only help he can give. Things like fixing leaky sinks really aren’t his forte.

“Can’t we just call your landlord for this?”

“Xavi would probably give me a lecture for not taking care of my appliances first,” David says wryly, “and then he would complain about the trouble, and how bending like this is bad for his joints—”

“He’s barely older than you.”

“Ugh, don’t remind me of that. I don’t want to be compared to that old man.”

Leo smiles. “If he’s an old man, and he’s only a few years older than you—”

“Pass me the pliers, will you?”

“Um, which ones?”

David shuffles back, dusting off his pants as he emerges from under the sink. “Tell me something, Leo. How did you survive when you were living by yourself?”

“Well...that’s what I have friends like you for, right?”

David snorts. “You’re lucky I live with you and take care of all your needs.”

Something about the last part of the sentence makes Leo’s face flush like it caught on fire, and when he looks at David, it’s clear that he realized the awkwardness of his wording as well, because he’s blushing too, faint but noticeable.

David clears his throat. “The pump pliers – the pair with the yellow handles.”

“You’re good at this stuff,” Leo remarks, handing the pliers over.

“It’s a must-learn bachelor skill, really.” David shrugs, disappearing under the sink again. “You have to learn to take care of yourself, you know.”

“You’re not a bachelor anymore.”

There’s a rather long pause. “That’s true,” David says, finally. “Hold on, I’m almost done. This leak isn’t as bad as I thought.”

“Oh. That’s good.”

Leo waits for one minute, two, three, time seeming to stretch out, slow and heavy, between them. “David?”

“Yeah?”

“I _am_ lucky. So—thank you. For everything.”

David pokes his head out to look at Leo. “Tell me something, Leo. Why did you ask me?”

“Ask you what?”

David pins him with a flat look. “You know what. Don’t play dumb. Not now.”

“You’re one of my best friends,” Leo says, and it’s the truth, but not the whole truth.

“Piqué and Fàbregas are closer to you.”

“They can barely fend for themselves.” Again, the truth, but not the whole truth.

“Is that why you asked me?” David’s expression is controlled, mostly unreadable, but Leo can see the disappointment in his eyes, and he hates it, he hates the thought of having disappointed David. “Because I can take care of you?”

Leo shakes his head, hard. “I asked you, because. I never really thought about spending my life with someone – well, I mean, I thought about it abstractly, hypothetically, but I never really thought about it. It wasn’t something that applied to me, you know?”

David nods, slowly. The small action gives Leo the courage to continue. “I know this is just a fake marriage, but it’s still, in a way, spending my life with someone. And you were the only one I could picture doing that with.”

“Am I?”

“I asked you first,” Leo says. “I didn’t want to ask anyone else, really. If you said no, maybe I would have started packing for Argentina.”

He thinks David’s smiling, but then David lowers his head and reaches for the other pair of pliers, fumbling and dropping it right after he picks it up. “Didn’t you say that you missed Rosario? That you wanted to go home?”

“For vacation, maybe. And anyway, Rosario isn’t home anymore. This is.”

“This?” David asks quietly. “Our apartment?”

“I thought it was your apartment.”

David raises his head, smiles. There’s a soft look in his eyes, one that Leo can’t quite put a name to but likes a lot. “Leo, it’s our apartment. It’s yours too.”

Leo swallows. “It’s home to me,” he says. “Even if it has a leaky sink.”

David chuckles. “I’m on that,” he says, holding up a tool that looks somewhere between a screwdriver and a large sewing needle. Leo doesn’t even want to know. “You know, it’s not fair that I do the wife’s _and_ husband’s work.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I cook and I clean, and I do stuff like put together furniture and fix pipes.”

Leo makes a face. “I don’t believe in designated gender roles,” he says with his chin lifted, and David laughs.

He has a nice laugh, Leo thinks. There are a lot of things about David that are nice, and Leo wonders why it’s taken a fake marriage for him to see some of them.

“There, all done,” David announces, straightening up, his hair messy and askew, a streak of black grease on his cheek. The dishevelled plumber look totally works for him, Leo thinks, and then he freezes because he’s never had such a thought about David before. “What’s the matter?” David asks Leo curiously.

“Nothing,” Leo says, scratching the back of his neck. “Good job. That was—looks like we didn’t need Xavi after all.”

“Who needs that grumpy old man?” David scoffs, and Leo has to stifle a smile because that’s exactly what Cesc and Gerard call David.

“I don’t know,” Leo says innocently. “Grumpy old men have their good sides, too.”

David gives him a narrow-eyed look. “Is that a veiled insult?”

“It’s a veiled compliment,” Leo tells him solemnly, and when they lock eyes, they suddenly dissolve into laughter, in the middle of the apartment that feels more and more like a home every passing day.

 

“What...is this?” David asks, wide-eyed, as he stares down at his plate.

“I made dinner,” Leo says hesitantly. “Well, I tried.” David doesn’t say anything; Leo supposes that his attempt at cooking struck him speechless. “I’m sorry, I know I undercooked or burned everything, but I think it’s edible! Probably.”

“Leo.” David draws his eyes away from the table. “I appreciate the effort, I really do, but I don’t think salmonella is a good way to start the weekend.”

Leo’s shoulders slump. “You work so hard. I just wanted to help. It’s not fair that you have to make dinner after coming home from work.”

“Leo.” David puts a hand on his shoulder. “Why don’t we order takeout from that Chinese place you like? The Southern Fig or whatever.”

“It’s the Western Plum.”

“Right.” David smiles, a little sheepishly. “That.”

“I really wanted to make dinner for you. I know I’m mooching off you already.”

“You’re not mooching off me,” David says. “We’re married.”

“Well, married couples can still mooch off each other.”

“Yeah, but that’s kind of the point of marriage, isn’t it?”

Leo laughs. “In sickness and in health, in good times and in bad, in joy and in sorrow—”

“—I promise to mooch off you or let you mooch off me, depending on whose job is better, and hope that if we can’t have good home cooking, the takeout will get here quickly.”

“That’s a nice vow,” Leo says. “Been saving that?”

“For someone special,” David replies, and he smiles at Leo with his eyes and mouth.

 

They get rice noodles with black bean sauce and beef; Leo loves the beef, and David the noodles. They both push the onions to the side, and have a mini debate over whether red or green peppers are better. They also get fried turnip patties and _The Western Plum_ ’s signature mango pudding, which they promise always contains a surprise.

“Their name is really stupid, you know,” David says conversationally, spearing a turnip patty and a piece of shrimp with his chopstick. When he gets lazy, he just uses his chopsticks separately like forks. The sight of it always makes Leo want to smile, for some reason.

“The Western Plum?”

“Yes,” David says. “I mean, first of all, they’re a Chinese restaurant, so they should be called the eastern something, and what the hell is with the plum part? When I think of plums, I think of plum juice, and then—”

“David, we’re eating.”

“But they do make some great food.” David finishes the rice noodles with a rather obscene-sounding slurp that makes Leo’s face feel warm.

“Let’s get the General Tso’s chicken next time.”

“You mean, next time you try to cook?” David’s grin is teasing and boyish; when he smiles like this, the lines around his left eye always seem to be deeper than the ones around his right for some reason.

Leo likes this smile. He likes a lot of things about David, and he finds himself thinking that this marriage doesn’t feel so fake anymore.

“I just want to do something for you,” Leo says honestly. If this is really their home, then he has to do his share too. He has to carry his weight. He’s always hated being a burden, and that’s the last thing he would want to be for David.

David’s eyes soften. “Maybe you want to consult a cookbook first, then.”

“I’ll consider that,” Leo says flippantly. “I’ve never cooked before, you know. Unless heating soup out of a can counts.”

“My mom used to tell me that nothing good comes from a can,” David says offhandedly. “Then again, she also told me that swallowing gum will lead to erectile dysfunction.”

Leo chokes on his spit. “She—what?”

“Or maybe she didn’t,” David says contemplatively. “I can’t remember if my mom told that, or if I read it on the Internet.”

“I hope it’s the latter,” Leo says, a little weakly.

“Not that I have erectile dysfunction or anything,” David adds, like he doesn’t want Leo to get the wrong idea.

Leo holds up a hand. “Don’t worry, David, I’m not judging.”

David shakes his head, laughing under his breath. “Hey, at least you didn’t burn down the kitchen.”

“You’d probably prefer that I did. Then I wouldn’t try again.”

“Is it too late to ask you to burn it down now?”

“Hey!” Leo protests. “I don’t think I did _that_ badly.”

“Just tell me the next time your spatula hand’s itching,” David says. “I’ll teach you.”

Leo has a feeling the offer is genuine, and it makes him smile, but. “I don’t have a spatula hand.”

“Exactly.”

“You suck,” Leo grumbles, and pretends to storm away from the kitchen, but it’s only to go to the bathroom and splash water on his warm face. He looks in the mirror, and the slightly flushed face that stares back at him looks happy; uncomplicatedly, enviably so.

He almost doesn’t recognize it as his own face.

 

When he returns to the kitchen table, David is studying the mango pudding with intense scrutiny.

“Found any gold yet?” Leo jokes.

“I was hoping you’d be there for that part.” David smiles at him, and his breath catches in his throat for a second. It’s a stupid, teenage, _besotted_ reaction, but Leo’s beyond beating himself up over it anymore. He’d be covered in bruises at this rate.

“I wonder what the surprise is,” Leo says, staring curiously at the pudding.

“We’ll have to try it to find out, I guess,” David replies. “That’s how surprises usually work.”

“Right.” Leo takes the spoon that David offers him, and they dig in at the same time.

The mango pudding is delicious, not that Leo would have expected any less from _The Western Plum_. Usually he and David don’t order dessert, so they’ve never had this before, and he regrets it immensely.

It’s a lot like biting into a mango, but the flavours that play over his tongue contain more than just a mango’s biting sweetness; there’s something creamy, sort of like milk but lighter, not as rich.

“Coconut milk,” David says, as if reading Leo’s mind. “They use it instead of condensed milk like most other places do. It adds a unique taste to the pudding.”

“I like it,” Leo decides.

“So do I.” David wraps his lips around his spoon and licks it languidly, savouring the pudding, and Leo’s mouth goes dry. He doesn’t know how he’s supposed to eat with a sight like that in front of him.

David looks at him, blinking. “Aren’t you going to have some more? We haven’t gotten to the surprise yet.”

Leo nods, swallows harshly. “Okay, I—yeah. I am.” He makes sure to keep his eyes away from David, which is much, much easier said than done.

The surprise turns out to be a single, unshelled pistachio – well, Leo’s pretty sure it’s one, but it looks like it could be two grown together. It looks pretty deformed.

“Wow,” Leo says. “What a great surprise.”

David squints at the pistachio(s?). “Is that one or two, do you think?”

“I really don’t know. Maybe they’re best friends and they’re close enough to be one.”

“Or,” David says lightly. “Maybe they’re married.” He picks up the pistachio(s?) with careful fingers and breaks it (them?) into two. “Want to share?”

“Sure,” Leo agrees, and takes the nut from David’s hand. It doesn’t look sugared or anything, but it still tastes sweet in his mouth. It’s probably the pudding.

“Did you know,” David starts, “that pistachio literally translates to ‘happy nut’ in Chinese?”

“You know so much stuff,” Leo says, shaking his head in wonder. “You make me feel so dumb sometimes.”

“Don’t worry, I just have that effect on people.” Leo snorts, and David adds, “And anyway, you’re not anything close to dumb.”

“Aren’t I?” Leo murmurs to himself, under his breath, because he still can’t quite sort out his feelings about David, and he thinks that it shouldn’t be this hard. “You’re my pistachio,” he says, meeting David’s eyes head-on.

“Your...happy nut?” David says a little hesitantly. “Is that another one of your ‘veiled compliments’?”

“Maybe you’re right,” Leo braves on. “Maybe those two pistachios, the ones we ate, were married. Maybe they were just hiding in the pudding, and they were together all the time but they weren’t really together, and the pudding was too big and too sweet, and it made them forget what they tasted like.”

“Leo,” David breathes. “That was possibly the worst analogy I have ever heard.”

“Even worse than my cooking?”

And as an answer, David pulls him into a kiss.

Leo feels like white noise is thundering in his ears, and everything in front of him has blurred into a soft haze. He doesn’t mind. Instead, he hangs onto David and pulls him closer, breathes him in, drowns in his mouth, and thinks about incomplete vows and mushroom omelettes and yellow-handled pliers and mango pudding that had the sweetest surprise of all.

“Sometimes,” David says, his breathing unsteady, his forehead leaned against Leo’s. “Sometimes I wish this marriage was real. I want—I want it to be.”

“Who said it isn’t real?”

David stares at Leo, his eyes closer to the colour of cappuccino than black coffee. “Leo, you married me so you wouldn’t get deported.”

“And I’m still here because I like you.”

David smiles, the kind of smile that starts in the heart and spreads to every corner and crevice. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Leo kisses David again, more forcefully this time. “This is home. And this is real.”

“Okay,” David murmurs, half against Leo’s lips, the two of them breathing each other’s air, hearing each other’s heartbeats. “Okay.”

 

So, they’re in love, and it’s strange but strangely not at the same time.

David still reads the newspaper every morning, and he and Leo share the puzzles section. Leo likes the crosswords; David prefers Sudoku. Leo has discovered that, although he’s right-handed, his left hand is better with the spatula.

With a lot of help from David and a mountain of cookbooks, Leo’s a pretty decent cook now, although he’s more than happy to eat one of David’s omelettes every morning.

“You’re such a child,” David laughs when he sees the breakfast Leo prepared for him – two sunny side-up eggs, with a strip of bacon arranged like a smiling mouth.

“Oh wait, I forgot something.” Leo adds a slice of strawberry right under the middle part of the bacon – a soul patch. “There we go. That looks just like you now.”

“The resemblance is astonishing,” David deadpans. “Tell me one thing though. Why am I bald?”

“Sorry, I was going to get some pineapple leaves for your hair, but—”

“I can’t believe you actually had something in mind.” David drops his forehead onto his open palm for a second, but when he sighs, his mouth curves up, and Leo can see those lines crinkling around his eyes, deeper around his left.

“Well, I have to be prepared, you know? I’ve been saving this.”

“Oh yeah?” David arches an eyebrow. “Mr. Messi, Iron Chef Extraordinaire?”

“For someone special,” Leo confirms, and they exchange a smile, the two of them alone but together in a place that can only be called home, in a marriage that started out of necessity and prospered out of love.

**Author's Note:**

> Black coffee/soul thing comes from _City of Bones_ , the first book of _The Mortal Instruments_ , by Cassandra Clare.  
>  _The Western Plum_ comes from Leo's name in Chinese (lame, I know) - 梅西, the individual characters of which translates to _plum_ and _west_ respectively.  
>  "Nothing good comes from a can" comes from _Everybody Loves Raymond_ (Marie Barone).


End file.
